Quote of the Day
With Democrats winning control of both chambers of Congress, Brady celebrated what it described as “gun violence prevention majorities” and called for action. The problem with that claim is there’s no evidence to show that’s what voters wanted.
An October Pew Research Center survey found that 84 percent of registered voters considered the economy very important to their congressional vote. The future of democracy followed at 73 percent, healthcare at 68 percent and education at 62 percent.
Gun policy (as a broad category) ranked 10th among 16 issues surveyed, with 45 percent calling it very important. That was down from 57 percent in a comparable October 2022 survey.
The contrast was particularly revealing among voters supporting Democrat congressional candidates. Just 40 percent considered gun control very important, compared with 88 percent for the economy and 82 percent for healthcare.
An NPR/PBS News/Marist poll reinforced those priorities. Asked to identify their most pressing election issue, 34 percent of likely voters selected the cost of living and 33 percent chose preserving democracy.
And when registered voters were asked whether protecting gun ownership rights or passing stricter gun control laws should take priority, the results were closely divided. Of those surveyed, 46 percent favored protecting gun ownership rights and 49 percent favored stricter laws.
Those findings complicate Brady’s assertion that election results demonstrate a broad, bipartisan demand for its policy agenda.
…
Brady’s blustering about a gun control mandate is not much more than hot air. The available polling establishes a more complicated picture of the electorate than a single-issue mandate. Election victories establish who will govern. They do not, by themselves, establish why Americans voted or which firearm restrictions they want enacted.
Larry Keane
November 5, 2026
Brady Claims Midterm Gun Control Mandate. Voter Polling Tells a Different Story. • NSSF
Emphasis added.
I found the “preserving democracy” result interesting. What this means to me is that anti-Trump propaganda for the last ten years has some deep roots now. I suspect the primary motivation of voters was to register their displeasure with President Trump. I do not believe it was motivated by a strong desire to severely infringe upon the rights of gun owners.
Successful politicians do not spit into the political wind. They do frequent private polling and know what issues earn and which lose points in the polls. Do you remember what Michigan U.S. Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed said in April 2023? As pointed out by Keane in the article I pulled the QOTD from:
Democrat Abdul El-Sayed defeated former Republican U.S. Rep. Mike Rogers for Michigan’s open U.S. Senate seat. His campaign focused heavily on healthcare, affordability and corporate influence.
But in an April 2023 video, El-Sayed proposed replacing the Second Amendment with a constitutional right to healthcare.
The video was subsequently removed from public view. When the remarks resurfaced, El-Sayed’s spokesperson said he respected the Second Amendment. Yet when asked in August whether he still favored replacing the constitutional protection, El-Sayed instead argued that more Americans were concerned about seeing a doctor than owning a firearm.
El-Sayed apparently realized the elimination of the 2nd Amendment was very toxic to the voters. If he wants to remain in power (of course he does; he is drawn to power, or he would not run for public office), he will not give his future opponents talking points that will cost him votes. And you can be sure other politicians learned a lesson from the firestorm El-Sayed created.
Reading the details about the poll, I found this (highlighting added):
The columns are types of Registered Voters (RV’s). In the three right columns are how the Democrat voters answered on the issues which were important to them in 2022 and in 2026 and the difference between those two years. The importance of “Gun Policy” to Democratic voters dropped 22 percentage points in four years. It ranks 10th of 16 issues among all registered voters as well as Democratic voters. Gun policy mattered more to Republican voters (54%) than to Democratic voters (40%), so a mandate for new restrictions is hard to read from this poll.
The politicians know this, and I believe that is why guns were not a major campaign issue this year. A mandate needs voters who put the issue first, and the polling says they didn’t.